Chapter 1 - A Small Crevasse

There have been four times in this world.

The present, which encompasses contemporary time, looking back to the beginning of the written word; these times we know and study. We can read of trials and prosperity, how others thought and acted and lived.

Before was the time of language. Stories were passed down from generation to generation, where our ancestors told their progeny tales of war and peace, what they believed and achieved and survived. It is supposed that many of these oratories became a part of the written record and brings us a closer connection.

Prior to written history and language, there was a time when man became something more than an animal; the time before man.

Then there are sometimes. Sometimes are gaps, filled with times before, these moments are magic. Times when myth and legend meet reality; most people never experience this because of distractions. This is one of those sometimes.

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A little more than halfway to the top of Kerish Mountain, a fern grotto grows in a gap of rocks – very near the tree line. There is neither road nor path on this side of the mountain and seemingly little reason to ever explore there, this small oasis remains veiled and private.

Looking down from this vantage point, trees and rocks grow from the earth in perfect chaotic arrangement. Deciduous and evergreen, granite, slate and sandstone; meadows carpeted in blue lupines, standing against the lush greenery. The streams, pools and rivulets gurgle and chuckle with the birds.

Above the tops of clouds that move like mist through the trees; passing through like a tourist from heaven, leaving everything it touched wet with damp kisses. All the flowers with cheerily upturned faces kissing the bottom of the sky like a long lost lover – returned.

The spring source flows from an abutment, where the cool air and the warm sun meet in a swirl of epiphany before beginning their day. A gap in the rock spills water into a pool below. Mist and fog rising off the pool creates its own atmosphere and the perfect environment for the lush ferns and moss clinging to the rock faces. A wonderland where time passes without the realization that anytime has gone by at all.

The pool beneath the rocks is a perfect basin carved by centuries of water, surrounded by moss and ferns above, lily pads festooned with flowers floating and giant tadpoles and mottled goldfish swimming below. The water is so clear that the depth is difficult to judge and it has a luminescence at night that reflects back up onto the grotto making everything feel as if it is under water and a giant goldfish swimming above during slumber wouldn’t be a surprise. Morning glories in the undergrowth follow the retreating shadows, until the restraint of their stems stretch taut. The base of each petal rolling into one another to sleep in the shade of the pines; resting until the evening breezes blow through the trees, waking reluctantly to dusk. Upside-down umbrellas, catching evening showers and the morning dew.

In a small crevasse, warmed by the constant temperature of the water on one side and cooled by the mist and moisture on the other, carpeted by a lush moss, there live two sprites, Shimmer and Shadow.